Originale
Don DeLillo: Underworld
I'll tell you what I long for, the days of disarray, when I didn't give a damn or a fuck or a farthing. ... I long for the days of disorder. I want them back, the days when I was alive on the earth, rippling in the quick of my skin, heedless and real. I was dumb-muscled and angry and real. This is...
Cormac McCarthy: Blood Meridian
Loose strands of ambercolored kelp lay in a rubbery wrack at the tideline. A dead seal. Beyond the inner bay part of a reef in a thin line like something foundered there on which the sea was teething. He squatted in the sand and watched the sun on the hammered face of the water. Out there island...
William Faulkner: As I Lay Dying
But I ain't so sho that ere a man has the right to say what is crazy and what ain't. It's like there was a fellow in every man that's done a-past the sanity or the insanity, that watches the sane and the insane doings of that man with the same horror and the same astonishment. Es ist eine...
Mary Lawson: Crow Lake
I am not from a background where people talk about problems in their relationships. If someone does or says something that upsets you, you don't say so. Maybe it's another Presbyterian thing; if the Eleventh Commandment is Thou Shalt Not Emote, the Twelfth is Thou Shalt Not Admit to Being Upset,...
Gillian Bradshaw: Cleopatra’s Heir
I'm not »enough«, not good enough or wise enough or strong enough. They reverence what I'm supposed to be, but me ... the me that is here, now, talking to you - they don't even see. If I do something that makes them notice me - like have a seizure, or fail - then they're embarrassed, and they try...
Mary Lawson: The Other Side of the Bridge
The thought came into his mind - not drifting gently in but appearing suddenly, fully formed, like a cold hard round little pebble - that Jake hated him. The thought had never occurred to him before but suddenly, there it was. Though he couldn't imagine a reason. Surely he was the one who should...
Nadeem Aslam: Maps for Lost Lovers
All great artists know that part of their task is to light up the distance between two human beings. Chanda, die von ihren Brüdern brutal ermordet wird, weil sie unverheiratet mit ihrem Liebhaber zusammenlebt, obwohl einer ihrer Brüder selbst ein außereheliches Verhältnis hat. Ihre Schwägerin, die...
Guy Vanderhaeghe: Homesick
In this house there's no fooling yourself that being different could be like it is in the movies. In the movies, no matter what kind of shit you're taking from people up on the screen, there's always the audience that knows the truth about you, is hoping for you, even admires you. There's no...
Anita Desai: Fasting, Feasting
Then Arun does see a resemblance to something he knows: a resemblance to the contorted face of an enraged sister who, failing to express her outrage against neglect, against misunderstanding, against inattention to her unique and singular being and its hungers, merely spits and froths in...
M.J. Hyland: How the Light Gets In
There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in ... (Leonard Cohen, »Anthem«) Die sechzehnjährige Louise aus Sydney soll ein Jahr als Austauschstudentin bei einer amerikanischen Gastfamilie in der Gegend von Chicago verbringen. Jedoch ist dies nicht eine Geschichte, die etwa an das...
Guy Vanderhaeghe: The Englishman’s Boy
Lots of things I wish hadn't happened - but everybody looks to keep his own precious hair. You drop the cat in boiling water he's going to claw his way out or cook. I didn't never intend to cook. So I clawed. I don't make no apology for it. You'd have done the same. But what happened with the girl...
E. L. Doctorow: Welcome to Hard Times
Why does there have to be promise before destruction? What more could I have done? ... The first time I ran, the second time I stood up to him, but I failed both times ... »Welcome to Hard Times« ist ein ungewöhnlicher Western. Der Erzähler, unter dem Namen Blue bekannt, schreibt seine Geschichte...
Martin McDonagh: The Pillowman
All these political ... what would you call 'em? 'The government should be doing this.' Please. Fuck off. You know what I say? I say if you've got a political axe to grind, if you've got a political what-do-you-call-it, go write a fucking essay, I will know where I stand. I say keep your left-wing...
Cormac McCarthy: The Crossing
He said that in any case the past was little more than a dream and its force in the world greatly exaggerated. For the world was made new each day and it was only men's clinging to its vanished husks that could make of that world one husk more. An philosophischen Aussagen dieser Art herrscht in...
William Faulkner: Absalom, Absalom!
... because there is that might-have-been which is the single rock we cling to above the maelstrom of unbearable reality ... Quentin Compson, ein junger Student aus Mississippi, versucht Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts, Shreve, seinem kanadischen Zimmergenossen auf dem College in Harvard, den Süden...
Donna Tartt: The Little Friend
Life without Ida. If Ida didn't exist, thought Harriet - sitting cross-legged on the dusty, sun-bleached overpass - then I wouldn't feel so bad now. All I have to do is pretend I never knew her. Simple. Harriet ist erst zwölf in dem Sommer, in dem Ida, langjährige schwarze Hausangestellte, ihre...
Tom Robbins: Jitterbug Perfume
The price of self-destiny is never cheap, and in certain situations it is unthinkable. But to achieve the marvelous, it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought. Zentrales Thema in »Jitterbug Perfume« ist die Fähigkeit des Menschen, sein Schicksal selbst zu bestimmen. Die Frage, inwieweit...
Pete Dexter: Paris Trout
»There are things like that buried in everybody,« he said. »That doesn't mean you want to act on it, just that it's there. We're all flawed people.« Pete Dexters Roman »Paris Trout« hat nichts mit der französischen Stadt oder ihren Forellen zu tun. Paris Trout ist der Eigenname des Mannes, der...